Easter Frustrations

Perhaps because I am perennially optimistic, I think this is a good sign. Almost everywhere I look, everything I listen to within my Catholic circles (in which I include the inclinations of my own soul) I find frustrating and frustrated cries of cluelessness, for lack of a better way to phrase it. Oh, maybe it all boils down to my having eaten too much contraband food as we celebrate Easter and so my mood is all wonky, but on the other hand, maybe there actually is something out there that is groaning. Let me try to pull out a few examples.

This matter of celebration, for example. I've read a few comments about people wanting to celebrate the whole Easter season, or wanting other people to want to celebrate the whole season, but there goes that whole frustration thing. It's either "I don't know how" or "Why doesn't anyone get it?"

To this I say: mystagogy. It's what Easter is for. Today's gospel seemed to get right to the point. When we have real conversion and because of it, experience real joy, we need to drill down through it to understand more deeply our place in the story of salvation history and the meaning of what we have received. (Hint: it isn't about possession of warm fuzzies.) We also need to listen to Acts during Easter like an apprentice watches the work of the master. From this we learn what to expect as we move out into that meaning. But the liturgical cycle is all about appreciation of what we have and preparing for what is to come. And Pentecost comes later. And yes, of course we live all of it all the time, but the "cycle" part of it means we are always moving through, moving deeper.

And all of that is an aside, a really important aside, and I should probably put it in a different blog post, but this is really about frustrations, and I'm working out my own frustrations by writing, and WHOSE BLOG IS IT, anyway.

Did I mention that too much sugar and wheat aren't always good for my physio-emotional health?

Another thing I am aware of is Christians obsessing over liturgical details in various ways. Worship is super-duper important. But if we reduce Christian worship to liturgical style and rubrics, we are in big trouble. If we lose sight of Romans 12:1 worship, offering our bodies as living sacrifices, we are in trouble. We cannot offer worship to a God who is essentially a cultural icon or ideology.

And to this I say: kerygma! I have been studying the book of Acts with my daughter and yesterday was struck hard by Peter's preaching in Acts 10. I've read it who knows how many times, but when I read it yesterday I thought to myself, if one were to ask 95% of practicing Catholics what the core of the gospel is, how many, including myself, would be at a loss for exactly what to say? Love God and love people? Jesus died for you, so be nice? Obey the Church?

I know lots of Catholics who sincerely want to "tell the good news," but if we can't figure out what that is, well, no wonder we are as frustrated as hell. Are altar girls and communion in the hand really draining the Church of power? Do we need 20 new courses in how to do everything better? Frustration.

And if I want it to really get bad, all I have to do is look in my own life. From childhood I have sensed a yearning that if I was going to be a Christian, I would not be a play-Christian or a Mickey Mouse Christian. At one point I realized that I had sat in a church for some time without living faith, and I wondered if maybe there were others like that, and I felt deeply called to love this sort of person to life. If, you know, there were one or two others. The more I grow the more I realize I have nothing to give anyone that might spiritually help them, but God does, and He can give stuff through me. In fact, that's how He gives everything, just about. So now I'm becoming a Carmelite and I learn that the way I participate in this is by praying. Recently I had to answer a question about whether I am faithfully fulfilling my 30 minutes of prayer daily. I struggled with answering this question far more than I needed to, because I realized I was addressing it subjectively, as if the question were whether I feel I am praying 30 minutes a day. On the first hand, sometimes prayer really works and time flies and it hardly feels I am doing anything, so how can I count that? On the second hand, sometimes prayer walks or plods and feels so effort-laden, and how can I count that? And on the third hand, there are plenty of times that I simply sit before God and tell Him I haven't the foggiest idea what it means to pray, so how can I know if I'm doing it or not? I have a talent for making simple things very complicated. Frustration.

But other than not stressing and over-burdening my physio-emotional self with sugar, wheat, and caffeine, I guess it boils down to setting one's foot firmly on the path of faith, on the revelation of God, on the teachings of the spiritual masters I follow, and disregarding, sometimes, what it all feels like. And all those folks out there and their feelings. I mean, yes, we all get to have our feelings, and we all have to acknowledge them, but woe to us who are led by them. They do not determine how faithful we should be, how diligent we should be, how loving we should be, or what path we should take. Perseverance means that we keep going, regardless of what is going the other way or blowing in our faces.

Sometimes, frustration really is just a cry of "God, I want you!!" If frustration becomes an acknowledgment of our need and a cry for mercy that seeks contact with the God who is mercy, then fine. With patient endurance and openness to God, there's nothing to fear in frustration.

And now I suppose I'll go dig up my garden...